Planned airport expansion that would result in hundreds of thousands of extra flights a year could risk the government’s own net zero goals, a committee of MPs has found.
The report from the cross-party Environmental Audit Committee said the government had also “not demonstrated” that the negative climate impact of expansion would be outweighed by the economic growth created.
The government has approved several airport expansion schemes, most recently a third runway at London Heathrow and a second runway at Gatwick.
The Department for Transport said airport expansion plans would “only go ahead if it aligns with our legal obligations on climate change”.
Ministers are expected to announce which of two rival proposals is preferred for the expansion of Heathrow within weeks.
The Gatwick decision could lead to an extra 100,000 flights per year. If Heathrow gets permission to build a third runway, that could mean another 276,000 flights a year, with approval for an expansion of Luton airport also potentially adding tens of thousands.
The Environmental Audit Committee said the only prospect of meeting net zero would be if airport expansion was “accompanied by a serious strategic approach to increasing the pace of decarbonising aviation”.
However, its chair Toby Perkin noted that technological solutions – such as sustainable aviation fuel – were not yet being used on a commercial scale.
The report said the plans were likely to provide some economic growth, but how much was unclear, and the government had not provided supporting evidence.
The UK has legally binding targets to reduce its levels of planet-warming emissions, and contribute to the global goal of preventing average temperatures rising by more than 1.5C by 2050.
Above this temperature level, scientists anticipate significant impacts from global sea level rise, more extreme weather and impacts on agriculture.
To prevent temperatures increasing there is a limit to the amount of greenhouse gases, such as CO2, that the world can release, and the UK has set out its own share of these – known as carbon budgets.
On Wednesday, the Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander told Parliament that Heathrow’s expansion plans “must align with our legal, environmental and climate commitments”.
A spokesperson for the DfT said: “We have been clear that airport expansion will only go ahead if it aligns with our legal obligations on climate change, including net zero, and we will be seeking advice from the independent Climate Change Committee to inform the ANPS review.”
But Dr Alex Chapman, a senior researcher at New Economics Foundation (a think tank focused on environmental and social policies) who gave evidence to the environmental audit committee, said the inquiry was a “damning assessment of this government’s airport expansion agenda”.
“This government is unable to produce evidence that supports their central claim: that growing our airports will grow our economy.
“Had they done their research they would have found that demand for business air travel is collapsing and we’re flying ever more tourists to spend money outside the country than we are flying in.”
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